Why would anyone work there, then, unless that's the only place they could get hired as a dev? And if the latter is the case, then that sort of stamps the case closed from the get-go...
Great money?
Not really relative to broader options in tech. The big money goes to the consulting leaders, but most of these folks look like glorified grifters more and more as time goes on.
Ultimately AI may be a big threat to the sort of “advisory” work McKinsey historically focused on.
Analysis of what? What does that mean? What's something you conceivably would need a consulting firm to "analyze?" I don't understand why management consulting firms would hire software people in the first place, and then punish them for not being on a client-facing project. That seems a bit contradictory to me, but this is all way out of my wheelhouse
Analysis: 1. How do I build a datacenter 2. How is the industrial ceramic market structured, how do they perform 3. How does a changing environment impact life insurance Strategy: 1. Should I build a datacenter 2. Should I invest in an industrial ceramics company 3. Should I divest my life insurance subsidiary Specifically in the software world this would be "automate some esoteric ERP migration" or "build this data…
These look like questions you would give to AI in 2026.
Couple of things to add: McKinsey has a weird structure where there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Everybody there is reviewed on client impact, meaning it ends up being an everybody-for-themselves situation. So as a developer you have little guidance (in fact, you're still being reviewed on client impact, even if you have 0 client exposure). Then a (Senior) Partner comes in with this idea (that will get them a g…
Those comments are spot on. McKinsey was on a spree to become the best tech consulting company and brought a lot of great tech talent but the 2023 crisis made leadership turn 180 and simply ditch/ignore all the tech experts they brought to the firm. All the expertise has left the firm and now they are more and more becoming another BS tech consulting firm, with strategy folks that don't even know that ML is AI advisi…
I previously worked at BCGX, their tech arm. It's not quite as bad as you point out here, but tech workers are very much second-class-citizens. There's a "jock" vs. "nerd" dynamic between BCG business consultants and BCGX tech folks, even at senior levels. I think it's changing, but it will take a long time and many technical folks being admitted to the partnership.
Their model works great. It’s really about bypassing the existing power structure of the company. Competence of the work itself is a secondary objective. Most in-house initiatives can be slow rolled by management. The fresh faced consultant with 2-3 steps to access the CEO neutralizes that. It seems grifty but is really exploiting bugs in corporate governance. The current fad of firing the managers is a riff on this.…
This somehow implies that initiatives or strategies from consultants are somewhat successful. This is not the case in my experience.
They reflect the will of the principal who hired them. Success is in the eye of the beholder.
I mean - do you have the macid's of McKinsey's corporate devices?
After a minute near one of their offices I do. Macs are either randomized per session, which makes filtering on them pointless, or they are not and still broadcast making them non secure and easily spoofed. Relying on mac filtering is usually only an audit checkbox to check. There is a reason 3 letter agencies used to use them to track people as they are really easy to get and track (until they got randomized by phone manufacturers and OS's).
Why would anyone work there, then, unless that's the only place they could get hired as a dev? And if the latter is the case, then that sort of stamps the case closed from the get-go...
Great money?
Not really when you normalize by hours you are expected to work. You're also surrounded by spineless sycophantic keeners without an original thought in their heads who would throw you off the building for a good review.
It reminds me of Lewis' "National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments"
The health care is amazing, though. $30/mo for a family $900 deductible? Something like that. If you have a sick family member it's a no brainer.
According to levels the pay band caps out around $250k and a principal title. It's good but probably not enough for most to put up with the culture long term.
> [...] the pay band caps out around $250k [...] probably not enough for most [...] an absolutely wild statement to 99.9+% of the world
99.9% of the world doesn't live in the US with a 4.0 GPA from a top ten university.
They're not very bright, most of them. But they're very hard workers and high achievers. They stay for the resume candy or the health care.
> [...] the pay band caps out around $250k [...] probably not enough for most [...] an absolutely wild statement to 99.9+% of the world
99.9% of the world doesn't live in the US with a 4.0 GPA from a top ten university. They're not very bright, most of them. But they're very hard workers and high achievers. They stay for the resume candy or the health care.
>[...] US with a 4.0 GPA from a top ten university. They're not very bright, most of them.
the top students from the top ten universities in the US produce... mostly not very bright people?
this is getting even stranger to the rest of us plebians. sometimes i am left in awe of how different my world is from some of you here